Profiling Done Right

4 Comments so far ↓

• aDude // Jan 7, 2010 at 4:41 pm

  I must confess that I am entirely too enamored of the program “Lie to Me,” but I’m wondering if the best approach might be behavioral profiling.

  I would assume that any competent terrorist organization could figure out how to properly answer questions, not buy one way tickets for cash, etc. But trying to get around unconscious behavior is much more difficult. (Not impossible, as anyone who’s been cleaned out at a poker table by a world class player can tell you, but difficult nevertheless). If TSA folks could be trained to look for those signs, those individuals could be singled out for more intense investigation.

  Since I’m still paranoid about the idea of terrorists surreptitiously putting devices in other people’s carry-on, I’d couple that with lots of security cameras, so one could then roll back the tape (OK, it’s really a disk) and see if they came into close contact with anyone before entering security.

  One correction to your article. As we’ve established elsewhere in this forum, the poor and uneducated aren’t the source of Islamic terrorists. Which is interesting, because in the case of the Ku Klux Klan, their terrorists were poor and uneducated.

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• sinz54 // Jan 7, 2010 at 9:06 pm

  I fear I may never be able to fly again.

  I’ve got prostate problems. I don’t think I can sit through a 2 hour flight and never use the bathroom.

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• sinz54 // Jan 7, 2010 at 9:17 pm

  aDude:

  in fact, what you’ve described is part of the Israeli approach–looking for “tells.” But as you say, that takes a lot of training. (You don’t become a good poker player overnight, and looking for “tells” is not a mechanical rote process.) Maybe TSA should consider hiring screeners who claim to already be good at playing poker.

  David Frum:

  Your proposal is unworkable–because people change over time.

  Major Hasan might have had a security clearance at one time.

  Plenty of others who received top security clearances agreed to spy for the enemy later on, or even defected to the enemy.

  I can certainly envision a “trusted traveler,” who passed all his tests and was granted “trusted” status, deciding to work for al-Qaeda months or years later, just as Major Hasan did. Then we’re in deep trouble, because now he’s got a SpeedPass that speeds him through any checkpoint with minimal checking.

  And forcing all these “trusted travelers” to subject themselves to periodic rescreening is just going to be impossible, with all the tens of millions of them.

  Indeed, that’s how the USSR got so many agents during the Cold War: It was impractical to subject everyone with a security clearance to periodic rescreening, so Aldrich Ames (just to name one example) was never rechecked until it was too late.

  And another guy with a top-secret security clearance who decided to commit terrorism years after he got the clearance, was Bruce Ivins.

  The Israeli approach, as paraphrased by “aDude,” offers more promise–but it requires hiring and training a more sophisticated bunch of screeners.

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• Mandos // Jan 9, 2010 at 1:20 am

  There isn’t and there won’t ever be a perfect terrorism-prevention regime, if there are people who have access to household products and the motivation and desire to kill.

  Just as there isn’t a perfect murder-prevention regime, or a perfect burglary-prevention regime, …, …

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